Disaster recovery and business continuity plans are being undermined by a lack of time and resources, according to new research.

Over half of European companies do not have business continuity plans in place for recovery in the event of a disaster and a quarter have no disaster recovery plans relating to IT failures.

Only two-thirds of respondents said they are confident they can restore critical business information within two days of a problem.

The IDC research of 150 companies from the UK, France and Germany was sponsored by storage vendor Quantum.

Time and resources were identified as the key issues for most firms, with 40 per cent citing limited hardware budgets and 38 percent citing a lack of time.

Claus Egge, senior storage analyst at IDC, said in the research: "IT departments have been spending much time and effort on ways of bringing down the time it takes to restore data. Yet, this research shows that progress is slow towards a state where we can take it for granted that all businesses have all their mission critical data safely and soundly protected."

The research also found that legislation and regulatory compliance have driven business continuity and disaster recovery up the IT and business agenda. Almost a third of respondents said senior management are currently involved in compliance projects and a quarter said IT policies had been changed as a direct result of compliance requirements.

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